[Swprograms] BBC4 program on Cold War germ warfare cover-up

[SaulBro@xxxxxxx]

Received the message below from a fellow military veteran who sends out 
various military-related notices from time to time.  The program(me) looks 
interesting.
Saul Broudy

---------------------
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 12:23

Subject: Cold war history: a "one-off" escape for Blackpool

 


Trawler steamed into germ warfare site and no one said word

By Ben Fenton

(Filed: 19/09/2005)

Winston Churchill's government was prepared to let Blackpool suffer the Black 
Death rather than admit experimenting with germ warfare, a survivor of a test 
that went awry said yesterday.

Derek Bellerby was a crewman on the trawler Carella from Fleetwood, Lancs, 
which in Sept 1952 was the focus of panicked signals from the Admiralty after 
she accidentally sailed through the site of an experiment with pneumonic and 
bubonic plague germs.

A decision was taken not to stop the fishermen and give them medical checks, 
but let them steam on towards their home port and to enjoy shore leave that 
could have started an epidemic in Britain's most famous seaside resort.

"We knew nothing about it at the time and we sailed home to Fleetwood and I 
have no doubt that me and my mates went off to have quite a few beers in 
Blackpool and talk to a few friendly ladies, just like we always did," Mr Bellerby, 
now 73, but then a 20-year-old fisherman, told The Daily Telegraph.

"It sounds like whoever decided to let us do that rather than tell us what 
had been going on was ready to let Blackpool get infected with this disease, 
doesn't it?"

The first detailed examination of the disastrous experiment and the resulting 
cover-up of Cold War biological weapons research will be broadcast on BBC 
radio this week after members of the Carella's crew and naval officers who took 
part in the experiments were tracked down by producer Jolyon Jenkins.

Mr Bellerby, who spent 40 years at sea and retired to Hull, said that before 
he met Mr Jenkins earlier this year, he had no idea that he and his shipmates 
had come so close to death.

"After I met the BBC chap I checked my records and I realised that it was on 
that trip that I had this strange thing where my hair started falling out in 
clumps."

Hair loss is not a symptom of the plague, but the Ben Lomond, the converted 
tank landing craft that carried out the experiments, was carrying other, 
top-secret biological strains as well.

The extraordinary story began on Sept 16, 1952, when the Ben Lomond was 
reaching the end of a series of tests, codenamed Operation Cauldron, involving 
strains of plague and brucellosis in an isolated bay 25 miles north of Stornoway 
in the Outer Hebrides.

For a week before the last tests, in which pneumonic plague germs were to be 
released and allowed to drift over a pontoon on which cages of monkeys and 
rabbits had been placed, the wind had been blowing in the wrong direction. In the 
evening of Sept 16, it changed and the captain of the Ben Lomond decided to 
begin his trial. One minute before the germs were to be released, the Carella 
came into view, but Capt Philip Welby-Everard RN decided that there was still 
time to warn the trawler off.

The plague germs began their wind-borne journey, but repeated danger signals 
from the Ben Lomond and her escorts to the Carella were ignored and the 
fishermen travelled within about two miles of the pontoon, passing through the path 
of the germ cloud 16 minutes after the experiment began.

Capt Welby-Everard calculated that the wind speed was not high enough to 
carry the bacteria to the Carella, so his first report to the Admiralty was not 
taken as seriously as his second, in which he re-stated the wind speed as 7-9 
mph instead of 6 mph.

This caused the biological warfare specialists at Porton Down to tell the 
Admiralty that there was a risk of contamination. The matter was dealt with at 
the highest levels, with the involvement of the First Sea Lord and Rab Butler, 
who as Chancellor of the Exchequer was deputising for the absent Winston 
Churchill as Prime Minister. It was considered of the highest "political 
consideration" not to alert the crew and the nation to what had happened, not least 
because the scientists were warning that all the rats on the Carella should be 
killed and the ship fumigated and the Admiralty believed that would be a clear 
sign that plague was suspected.

So the Carella and her crew of 18 were allowed to go back to port and to put 
to sea again. A destroyer and a fisheries vessel shadowed her from over the 
horizon, listening to her radio broadcasts, waiting to see if she called for 
medical assistance.

"I was very shocked when I first heard that," Mr Bellerby said.

Why the incident happened remains a mystery. Ted Harris, the son of the 
trawler's skipper, also called Ted, added: "My father was an ex-Royal Navy 
lieutenant-commander and I am sure he would not have ignored a danger signal like 
that."

But Roger Welby-Everard, son of the Ben Lomond's commanding officer, said: "I 
was a submariner in those waters and I have to say that up there the trawlers 
are a law unto themselves."

Eventually, with the Admiralty and No 10 anxiously waiting for reports, the 
Carella returned in complete good health to Fleetwood for a second time.

The Admiralty issued orders for all files, except one which is now open in 
the National Archives in Kew, to be burned and Blackpool's brush with the Black 
Death was consigned to the silence of official history. 

Operation Cauldron will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 8pm on Thursday.

bfenton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  <http://telegraph.co.uk/core/i/t.gif> 

 

© Copyright <http://telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?view=COPYRIGHT&grid=P9> 
 of Telegraph Group <http://telegraph.co.uk/pressoffice/index.jhtml>  Limited 
2005.


_______________________________________________
Swprograms mailing list
Swprograms@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://dallas.hard-core-dx.com/mailman/listinfo/swprograms

To unsubscribe:  Send an E-mail to  swprograms-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe, or visit the URL shown above.